Beyond the exotic the pleasures of Islamic Art

By Amyn B. Sajoo on October 3, 2011 in Art, Philosophy 0 Comments

What is it that makes Islamic art Islamic? In this brief essay, the author explo
res what links art spanning 14 centuries, several continents, varying political
regimes, internecine differences and cultural and ethnic boundaries.
The Language of Art
A picture, it is often claimed, can speak a thousand words. By that logic, objet
s dartshould be very talkative indeed. Yet time after time we find ourselves amid
paintings, crafts and sculpture that speak a language we dont quite understand.
Their beauty or ambience may delight the eye or spirit, but leave the mind or in
tellect unsatisfied. A common response is to insist that art is all heart and leave
it at that.
Yet ultimately, only the fullest engagement of the mind does justice to the weal
th of cultural, social and even spiritual resources that are on offer. When it c
omes to the heritage of Islam, what is called for par excellence is a response t
hat recognises the merging of secular and sacred. To visit Londons Victoria & Alb
ert Museum and see what is perhaps the most beautiful carpet in the world the le
gendary Ardabil rug from Safavid Persia should thrill mind and spirit. It is not
enough to lose oneself only in its geometric patterns in silk and wool, or in t
he glorious verses from Hafiz inscribed on it. One needs it all, including the c
ontext in which Maqsud Kashani designed the carpet for a shrine to honour the Sh
iism of 16th century Persia.
Context is what makes art Islamic and what makes its appreciation exciting. Consid
er, for example, the celebration of script and geometry that runs through the ar
chitecture, ceramics and textiles of the great Muslim dynasties, from Umayyad, O
ttoman andFatimid to Timurid and Mughal. On the one hand, inscriptions from the
Quran and various poetic sources mark the art as products of Islamic civilisation
s. Yet the idea of using calligraphy and geometric design is shared by other tra
ditions, most notably Chinese and Japanese. Oriental art had a profound impact i
n the formative period of Islamic art as witness the borrowings of blue and white
porcelain, dragon motifs and styles of depicting rivers and trees.
This eclectic spirit, of borrowing aesthetic ideas across traditions and adaptin
g them, reflected a cultural pluralism that became a hallmark of Muslim civilisa
tions at their best.
Muslim Cultural Milieus
At its peak in the 16th century, the Ottoman empires workshops at the Topkapi Pal
ace in Istanbul had nearly 900 artisans from across the Mediterranean world and
beyond from painters, engravers, weavers and tile makers, to bookbinders, goldsm
iths, ivory craftsmen, manuscript illuminators and musical instrument makers. Th
e cultural influences ranged from Byzantine (inherited when the Ottomans made Co
nstantinople their capital in 1453), to Italian, French, Central Asian, Persian
and Arab.
The resulting style could be described as new international, which then became a d
istinctive Ottoman idiom that in turn influenced Europe and the Middle East. Thi
s was evident in an acclaimed exhibition of the Topkapis treasures Palace of Gold
and Light that travelled to the United States last year. Among the displays was t
he luminous silk and velvet bookbinding of a translation of lbn Sinas 11th centur
y Qanun fil-tibb (Canon of Medicine). The binding style came from Renaissance Ita
ly, whose rivalry with the Turks did not come in the way of pluralist art. Fitti

ngly, the book belongs to Islams finest intellectual age, and was used in Europes
medical schools until the 19th century.
Or consider the boldly assertive Ottoman kaftans worn by the sultans and members
of his household, also on display at the Topkapi. One recognises the Central As
ian aesthetic such as from Tajik/Uzbek ikat, the colourfully woven textiles that
have decorated walls and floors for centuries. This should come as no surprise:
the Ottomans were of nomadic Central Asian ancestry, and never lost their nosta
lgia for the motherland.
18th century Ottoman clock (Hadiye Cangokce/Topkapi Palace Museum).
18th century Ottoman clock (Hadiye Cangokce/Topkapi Palace Museum).
The same eclecticism was evident half a millennium earlier in North Africa under
the Fatimid dynasty. From Roman architectural elements and Spanish mosaic decor
ation, to Chinese ceramics and Iraqi calligraphic styles, a freewheeling approac
h in the late 10th to 12th centuries produced in Egypt what experts today regard
as among the most creatively brilliant epochs in Islamic cultural history.
An especially interesting aspect of the Fatimid cultural milieu was that artisan
s frequently signed their work. This is a rarity in Muslim art at large, though
signatures could occasionally be found on Abbasid pottery or Persian rugs (like i
n a cartouche in the Ardabil at the Victoria & Albert Museum). We know today the
names of some 21 individual potters from that era, which attests to the elevate
d social and professional status that artisans enjoyed in Fatimid Cairo. Moreove
r, the ceramics carried not just princely or high society motifs, as was common
elsewhere, but also portrayed ordinary street life, often with an earthy, comic
wit.
Just as uncommon was the exuberance with which artisans depicted natural forms a
nimal, human and vegetal on a whole range of ceramics, rock crystal, glassware,
ivories, metalwork, textiles and woodwork. Birds, griffins, horses and palmettos
were popular adornments in public as well as private domains. When Fatimid rule
in Egypt yielded to the Ayyubid dynasty, among the first acts of the latter was
to paint over or destroy artwork with such natural depictions, on the grounds th
at they violated traditional strictures against figurative decoration. Yet the s
ame passion for natural depiction is also manifest in Safavid (Shii) and Mughal (
Sunni) art, reinforcing the point that the Islamic dimension is about an ethos rat
her than any normative form, style or content.
The Ethos of Islamic Art
But if the ideas of using calligraphy and specific materials like textiles and p
orcelain as bearers of artistic expression are shared with other great civilisat
ions, then what is it about context that makes the art in question Islamic? The answ
er appears to rest as it would in asking what makes art modern in its ethos. Behin
d the motifs and designs, mediums and forms, there is the distinctive outlook of
Muslim civilisations, at various times in their history.
The art captures and reflects ways of looking at the world and the individuals pl
ace in it, from the perspective not only of the artist but also of society at la
rge. And this imparts to the viewer a picture that we have come to regard as Isla
mic. This may not always be self-evident in a specific work of art, especially of
a secular nature; but it does eventually emerge in patterns of art, no matter h
ow secular. Some might contend that what we really mean by Islamic is merely the a
rt of a particular civilisation that happens to be Muslim. But that begs a quest
ion: why can we so readily perceive an artistic continuity across vast expanses
of time, space and culture from, say, 11th century Marrakesh under the Almohads
through Mamluk Cairo and Andalusia of the 13th century, to Timurid Bokhara of th
e 15th century, and down to Delhi under the Mughals at the dawn of modernity?

Clearly, the patterns that we identify in form and substance evoke an ethos that
we recognise as Muslim, largely in terms of how faith and intellect intertwine
in specific expressions of an artistic sensibility. An example from a particular
art form that of music will perhaps illuminate the argument. Traditional singin
g in the millennium-old qawwali tradition of South and Central Asia draws on Ind
ian, Persian and Turkic poetic and melodic influences, which are shaped into an
esoteric, sufi mode of recital that is now seen as uniquely Islamic. What renders
it so is not the poetic or melodic style (including the rhythmic handclap that o
ne also witnesses in gypsy flamenco, for example), but rather its devotional eth
os. Hence, qawwali becomes parallel to other Muslim musical art renditions, such
as the solemn dervish sama or devotional assembly.
17th century rock crystal flask (Hadiye Cangokce/Topkapi Palace Museum).
17th century rock crystal flask (Hadiye Cangokce/Topkapi Palace Museum).
Tapping into the ethos is not simply about playing detective and deciphering wha
t makes a given artwork Islamic. Rather, it is about enriching ones experience an
d appreciation of that objet dart by entering into its spirit as well as aestheti
c content. Often, this requires a conscious effort to cast beyond the obvious an
d resist the facile appeal of forms rather like searching beyond the zahir for t
he batin, the inner significance that lies beneath the surface.
To romanticise so-called exotic art, Prince Amyn Aga Khan noted in a 1989 speech at
Londons Zamana Gallery, is far easier than to present such art with the care and t
he reference to context that make it intelligible to the viewer and that allow h
im in time, to absorb it as almost part of his own cultural heritage. Knowing the
creative context enriches our reading of the codes and messages that the objects
express. And resisting the exotic temptation requires us to reach across time and
space for the underlying social ethos.
The Message of Islamic Art
In addition, this allows us to link the pluralism of culture with that of societ
y and politics, to understand the civil society in which life was lived. The Fat
imid Ismaili state in a Sunni Mediterranean milieu reached across religious and
ethnic lines for administrators, senior advisors and military commanders. Just a
s the Ottomans most renowned grand vizier was the Bosnian Serb, Sokollu Pasha, wh
o rose under Suleyman the Magnificent in the mid-16th century, so his counterpar
t under the Fatimids was the Jewish convert, Yaqub b. Killis, who rose under the
Caliph-Imams al-Muizz and al-Aziz.
Whether princely or plebeian, abstract or figurative, Muslim art is finally abou
t core values and aspirations driven by the energies of creative synthesis and i
nnovation. Its humanistic tenor is also a celebration of the graceful interplay
of intellect and faith. And that tenor should be all the more welcome in our age
of globalisation, with its mechanistic and homogenising impact on cultures and
civilisations.
Which is not to say that globalisation is necessarily the enemy of authentic loc
al traditions. On the contrary, great art is quintessentially about the reinvent
ion of tradition, rather than its reduction to some imagined essentials that mak
e it authentic. And globalisation can well be seen as a New Silk Road for the diff
usion of the local. Indeed, what Robert Hillenbrand observes about Fatimid art t
hat it was open to ideas and influences from all over the Mediterranean and beyon
d, and that one should not therefore expect an integrated style could well become
the leitmotif of Islamic art as a whole.
Further Reading

Barrucand, Marianne, ed. LEgypte Fatimide, son art et son histoire (Paris: Presse
s de lUniversit de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999).
Bloom, Jonathan. Arts of the City Victorious: The Art and Architecture of the Fa
timids(London: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies,
forthcoming).
Donto, Arthur. The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (New
York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000).
Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art (London: Yale University Press, 1973;
reprinted 1988).
Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Art and Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999
).
Irwin, Robert. Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture and the Literary World
(New York: Abrams Art History, 1997).
Meisler, Stanley. Splendors of the Topkapi, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2000, p
p. 115-22.